Drones

QUADMOVR Flies a Carbon Quadcopter Drone on Four Printed Radial Impellers

By Jackson Chung September 21, 2026

QUADMOVR is no stranger to designing, printing, and flying self-built quads, and their latest experiment swaps every propeller for a 3D printed centrifugal wheel that lives inside its own vaned case. Each unit starts as a 60 mm PETG impeller that bolts to a standard T-mount motor with two M2 screws. A matching 90 mm housing, 28 mm tall, sandwiches between the motor and the carbon arm so the spinning wheel sits inside a 0.3 mm gap. Air enters through the open center on top. Curved vanes fling it outward the way a shop blower does. Fixed vanes in the case then turn that radial blast downward, which is how four of these assemblies lift a plain movr200cp2 X frame.

Vectis Drone Times Five, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Builds a Fleet Before First Flight

By Jackson Chung September 16, 2026

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works just decided one flying prototype is not enough. This week at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, the company said it will build four more Vectis collaborative combat aircraft on top of the airframe already taking shape, for a planned test fleet of five. First flight remains aimed at the end of 2027, and the extra jets are already in work.

55 Pounds of Horizontal Rotors, Texas A&M’s Cyclocopter UAV

By Jackson Chung September 11, 2026

Texas A&M’s Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory has spent years turning a century-old flying idea into something that can actually hold still in the air. Latest result is a 55-pound uncrewed aircraft whose four rotors spin like sideways paddle wheels instead of overhead discs. A recent flight-test video from lab director Moble Benedict shows the machine in controlled hover, using RPM and pitch-phase control on all four cycloidal rotors.

Peter Ryseck’s Self-Balancing Pole Stands for Hours on a Coin-Sized Point

By Jackson Chung September 9, 2026

Peter Ryseck built a pole that balances on a contact patch about the size of a coin and stays there long after most people would have walked away. Four drone propellers sit on a 3D-printed mount at the top and give small sideways pushes whenever the shaft begins to tip. Nearly all of the weight still travels down the tube and into the ground, so those motors spend most of their time barely above idle.

Ice Dart Claws Onto Glacier Walls No Other Drone Can Touch

By Jackson Chung September 1, 2026

Standard drones start sliding on ice after a slope of only nine degrees. Gravity presses less of the aircraft into the surface as the angle rises, so a 60-degree wall leaves just half the usual downward force. Ice Dart, a 2.65-kilogram carbon-fiber quadrotor from Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, now perches on ice that steep and stays put.

Why the Skyrover X1 Drone Is a Smart Buy Right Now, Rivals the DJI Mini 4 Pro

By Bill Smith August 28, 2026

People keep saying the same thing about the Skyrover X1, priced at $699 (was $819), is that it’s a DJI Mini 4 Pro with a different badge. That rumor isn’t just forum gossip because fans have discovered code that still points to DJI cloud services, encryption keys that match DJI software, and FlySafe references that have been awkwardly renamed. The arms fold in the same way. Sensor windows are in the same locations. If you’re looking for a compact travel drone that you can still order in the United States, this might be it.

How a Desktop CNC and a Single Lithium-Ion Battery Fixed Tiny FPV Drones

By Jackson Chung August 24, 2026

Most tiny 1S FPV quads promise fun in a pocket-sized package and then land after ten or twelve minutes. Battery weight climbs fast once you chase real flight time, frames snap on the second or third hard landing, and the video link rarely reaches beyond a couple of kilometers. One builder decided those limits were optional.

Researchers Create Microscopic Drones That Rise on Sound Alone

By Jackson Chung August 16, 2026

Researchers at EPFL’s MicroBioRobotic Systems laboratory have built ultralight flying machines that carry no motors, batteries, or electronics. Hollow cavities printed into their structures turn ordinary sound waves into focused jets of air. Those jets provide the thrust that lifts the devices off a surface and keeps them aloft.

How the Palm-Sized Veeniix V995 Drone Turns Costly First Flights Into Low-Stakes Practice

By Bill Smith August 8, 2026

You’ve finally splurged and purchased a quality drone, charged the thing, and taken it outside, but gravity and nervousness take over and you watch, in slow motion, hundreds of dollars bounce off the pavement or be pulled up into a tree. It’s a pattern that helps to explain why so many people don’t make it past the first week with their new flying device. That’s where the Veeniix V995 micro drone, priced $33.99 (was $50), comes in, and it’s supposed to break the cycle for you.

HOVERAir Versa Combines Pocket Camera and Drone Into One Device, Goes From Hand to Sky in Seconds

By Bill Smith July 30, 2026

HOVERAir just revealed Versa, a camera that lives in two worlds at once. Hold it and you get a compact, three-axis stabilized shooter small enough for a pocket. Snap on a set of protected wings and the same module lifts off, follows you, and films from the air without a controller or any flying skill.